{"id":2599804,"date":"2026-05-07T08:49:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/this-covid-mandates-case-would-let-alito-prove-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bodily-autonomy\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T08:55:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:55:30","slug":"this-covid-mandates-case-would-let-alito-prove-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bodily-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/this-covid-mandates-case-would-let-alito-prove-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bodily-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid Case Lets Alito Prove Leftist Hypocrisy On Bodily Autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthis-covid-mandates-case-would-let-alito-prove-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bodily-autonomy%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2599804&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The passage argues that the Supreme court should address how Americans\u2019 bodily autonomy is protected under the Constitution, focusing on a petition called *Health Freedom Defense fund v. Carvalho*. It says the case centers on whether people can refuse COVID-19 vaccination mandates ordered by the Los Angeles Unified School District, especially after plaintiffs claim the shots did not prevent infection or transmission. The authors frame the dispute as a \u201cbodily integrity\u201d adn due process issue: a competent person has a constitutional liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment, applying a balancing test between individual liberty and government interests.<\/p>\n<p>The text then discusses how \u201csubstantive due process\u201d has been controversial and politically contested-often associated with abortion-but insists it has roots in constitutional law and earlier cases about bodily autonomy. It highlights decisions such as *Cruzan* (recognizing a liberty interest in refusing treatment), *sell* (addressing involuntary medical treatment), and later *Dobbs*, arguing that Justice Alito\u2019s approach preserved a more neutral, historically grounded method for evaluating substantive due process claims rather than treating them as political outcomes. The author claims *Dobbs* successfully moved the doctrine away from politics and therefore suggests that liberals should support *Carvalho* as a related privacy\/bodily integrity case. Rather, it argues that many self-described \u201cprogressives\u201d oppose *Carvalho* when they believe medical mandates should be upheld, showing hypocrisy in how they support \u201cbodily autonomy\u201d depending on the situation.<\/p>\n<p>the passage criticizes lower-court handling of the case-saying the 9th circuit avoided deciding the core constitutional questions-and portrays Alito as positioned to correct course by clarifying the legal rule and demonstrating that *Dobbs* was not anti-privacy but rather a rejection of a flawed doctrine.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>After six years, plenty of people would like to move on from the Covid-19 pandemic. But with one of Tony Fauci\u2019s top deputies under indictment for concealing emails about <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/covid-coronavirus-origins-indictment-fauci-morens-a1aa2b7519a0c00fc654391edf4fa155\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Covid\u2019s origins,<\/a> now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the many things that government got wrong during the pandemic, the human toll its overreactions took, and what courts can do to prevent them during the next emergency.<\/p>\n<p>Those issues are at the heart of the petition we filed in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/search.aspx?filename=\/docket\/docketfiles\/html\/public\/25-765.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Carvalho<\/em><\/a>, which the Supreme Court will discuss at its May 14 conference. But <em>Carvalho<\/em> is not just about the rules that apply during a pandemic. It involves important questions about the scope of Americans\u2019 right to bodily autonomy, the freedom to choose what they do with their bodies.<\/p>\n<p><em>Carvalho <\/em>involves people who used to work for the Los Angeles Unified School District. During the fall of 2021, the district ordered them to take the Covid-19 shot. They objected. They did not want to take an experimental shot that, by that point, had been proven not to prevent infection or the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n<p>The district said it would fire them, so the plaintiffs sued. Joined by Health Freedom Defense Fund, they argued that, because the Covid shot did not prevent infection or transmission, it was not a \u201cvaccine\u201d but a medical treatment. It was no different than Advil or Tylenol or any other medicine that might (or might not) reduce the symptoms of illness. Given the limited (if any) benefits and the potential risks, the <em>Carvalho <\/em>plaintiffs decided not to put the shot into their bodies. They grounded their objection in the Constitution\u2019s due process clause, alleging that the district\u2019s policy violated their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-gives-them-the-right-to-do-that-cornyn-grills-jackson-on-unenumerated-rights-judicial-policy-making\/\" title=\"\u2018What Gives Them The Right To Do That?\u2019 Cornyn Grills Jackson On Unenumerated Rights, \u2018Judicial Policy...Making\u2019\">substantive due process rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Substantive due process is a controversial doctrine. Conservatives spent years attacking it. Justice Antonin Scalia called the doctrine an \u201coxymoron\u201d and regularly dissented as the Supreme Court used it to create \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/512\/26\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new so-called fundamental rights, such as the right to structure family living arrangements \u2026 and the right to an abortion<\/a>.\u201d Indeed, after the court\u2019s abortion decision in <em>Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>, substantive due process became a pawn in the political battle between left and right, with conservatives refusing to acknowledge the doctrine\u2019s legitimacy and liberals using it to expand constitutional protections for political minorities.<\/p>\n<p>In truth, substantive due process has always been a part of constitutional law. Perhaps it was just poorly named. And the Supreme Court showed that when it tackled the politicized issue of assisted suicide during the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>In the first case it considered, <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/497\/261\/#tab-opinion-1958401\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health<\/em><\/a>, the court affirmed the Missouri Supreme Court\u2019s denial of a petition to end Nancy Cruzan\u2019s life after a terrible car accident. Despite the result, it echoed longstanding constitutional principles about bodily autonomy, including the Supreme Court\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/141\/250\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">own admonition<\/a>, from 1891, that \u201c[n]o right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.\u201d And it made clear: \u201cA competent person has a liberty interest under the Due Process Clause in refusing unwanted medical treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Cruzan<\/em> established a clear test for bodily integrity-based due process cases: \u201c[T]he question whether that constitutional right has been violated must be determined by balancing the liberty interest against relevant state interests.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Cruzan<\/em> was a watershed moment in constitutional litigation. Even Scalia recognized the potential validity of the substantive due process doctrine, writing that \u201cno \u2018substantive due process\u2019 claim can be maintained unless the claimant demonstrates that the State has deprived him of a right historically and traditionally protected against state interference.\u201d Like abortion, the common law outlawed suicide, though, so that made the result easy for him. But what about other invasions of bodily autonomy, like forced medication and compulsory vaccination?<\/p>\n<p>We soon got some answers. For example, in <em>Sell v. United States<\/em>, the Supreme Court upheld a prisoner\u2019s right to object to compulsory medical treatment, <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/539\/166\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">saying that<\/a>, \u201cas this Court\u2019s cases make clear, involuntary medical treatment raises questions of clear constitutional importance.\u201d It did not provide an answer but set forth a test to determine whether the government demonstrated a \u201cneed for that treatment sufficiently important to overcome the individual\u2019s protected interest in refusing it. \u2026\u201d The court\u2019s liberals led that decision, with Scalia left to grumble about procedural flaws in the case.<\/p>\n<p>Despite these developments, abortion kept dominating the substantive due process doctrine, especially after Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor retired in January 2006. O\u2019Connor, after all, led the court\u2019s controversial abortion decision in <em>Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>. George W. Bush was in the middle of his second term. The replacement of O\u2019Connor could change history.<\/p>\n<p>Bush chose Samuel Alito.<\/p>\n<p>We need to know that history to understand what Alito accomplished in <em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>, the 2022 case that overruled <em>Casey<\/em> and <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>. <em>Dobbs<\/em> is one of the most controversial decisions in American history. It sparked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2022\/06\/demonstrators-converge-outside-supreme-court-after-dobbs-decision\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">protests<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/04\/18\/explosive-report-as-dobbs-majority-faced-death-threats-liberal-justices-slow-walked-release\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">death threats<\/a>, and the unprecedented <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2026\/03\/will-the-mystery-of-the-dobbs-leak-ever-be-solved\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">leaking<\/a> of a draft opinion.<\/p>\n<p>It should not have been so controversial. Alito grounded the majority opinion in elite judicial reasoning, not rhetoric. And he used opinions from both liberal and conservative justices to make the most important points. For example, Alito embraced the substantive due process doctrine. But he framed it through an inherently conservative lens, asking \u201cwhether the right is \u2018deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition\u2019 and whether it is essential to our Nation\u2019s \u2018scheme of ordered liberty.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In a shrewd move, though, he led his analysis with an opinion from liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who relied on the test in an excessive fines case called <em>Timbs v. Indiana<\/em>. And he linked Ginsburg\u2019s analysis from <em>Timbs<\/em> to his own analysis in <em>McDonald v. City of Chicago<\/em>, which found that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-doj-warns-states-ags-feds-back-gender-affirming-care-rights-for-transgender-children\/\" title=\"Biden\u2019s DOJ Warns States\u2019 AGs: Feds Back \u2019Gender...Affirming Care\u2019 Rights for \u2018Transgender\u2019 Children\u00a0\">due process clause protects<\/a> an individual right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n<p>Then Alito did something brilliant. He recognized that <em>Timbs<\/em> and <em>McDonald <\/em>involved rights that the Bill of Rights explicitly mentions. But he acknowledged that \u201cit would be anomalous if similar historical support were not required when a putative right is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was a masterstroke in legal reasoning. After all, that is the <em>liberal <\/em>position. Embracing it gave Alito the intellectual high ground. And he spent the rest of the <em>Dobbs <\/em>opinion explaining, in meticulous detail, why the right to abort a child was not one of the privacies of life protected by the common law, and therefore why such a right was not part of the \u201cliberty\u201d interest protected by the substantive due process doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>As often happens, the court\u2019s three liberal justices disparaged Alito. They accused the majority of eliminating the constitutional right to privacy. They wrote eloquently about the right to bodily integrity. They said that, in America, \u201cwe do not believe that a government controlling all private choices is compatible with a free people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Liberal politicians joined the chorus. The Obamas <a href=\"https:\/\/barackobama.medium.com\/my-statement-with-michelle-on-the-draft-supreme-court-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade-94c0ae0c541a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> that \u201cthe freedom enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution requires all of us to enjoy a sphere of our lives that isn\u2019t subject to meddling from the state. \u2026\u201d They said <em>Dobbs <\/em>would \u201crelegate the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward to <em>Carvalho<\/em>. It is a bodily integrity case. It involves the constitutional right to privacy. It is built on the reasoning of cases like <em>Cruzan<\/em>, <em>Sell, Griswold v. Connecticut<\/em>, and other privacy decisions. Liberals should support it, right?<\/p>\n<p>They don\u2019t. At least, those liberals who call themselves \u201cprogressives\u201d do not support it. They view the right to privacy through a political lens. They support medical mandates like Covid-19 \u201cvaccine\u201d policies just as they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/justice-thomas-progressives-vs-the-declaration-50d5aea4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">supported eugenics<\/a>. They cherish the right to bodily autonomy so long as the person exercising it is a woman seeking to abort a child, not an adult who objects to putting an experimental medication in her body. As one Democrat, Joe Klein, <a href=\"https:\/\/josephklein.substack.com\/p\/on-benign-bigotry\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> when criticizing the leftist overreaction to Justice Alito\u2019s opinion in the Louisiana voting rights case, so-called progressives \u201care [the] true reactionaries. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, as Justice Clarence Thomas <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/justice-thomas-progressives-vs-the-declaration-50d5aea4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recently pointed out<\/a>, such hypocrisy is part and parcel of the \u201cprogressive\u201d movement. That makes the Supreme Court\u2019s action in <em>Carvalho <\/em>\u2014 it could decide to take the case as early as next week \u2014 even more important. From judges signing off on questionable eavesdropping requests to judges trying to block President Trump from the ballot, not to mention the hysteria over the Jan. 6 protests, the judiciary has become increasingly politicized in recent years. That is a mistake. Leave leftism to the political arena. The judiciary should be held to a higher standard.<\/p>\n<p>In that respect, <em>Carvalho<\/em> arrives at the perfect time. It is consistent with <em>Dobbs<\/em>. In fact, <em>Dobbs<\/em> was our model when we decided to take the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. We used opinions from liberal 9th Circuit judges like Stephen Reinhardt to frame the argument. We urged the 9th Circuit to put the law above politics.<\/p>\n<p>They couldn\u2019t do it. In an <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov\/datastore\/opinions\/2025\/07\/30\/22-55908.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">en banc opinion<\/a> authored by Trump appointee Mark Bennett \u2014 one of the many poor judicial appointments from Trump\u2019s first term, something the president seems <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/us-news\/law\/trump-judges-d3ecf000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">determined to correct<\/a> \u2014 the 9th Circuit refused to tackle those constitutional questions. It rubber-stamped the district\u2019s reasoning. It wants to move on.<\/p>\n<p>That is where Justice Alito comes in. As Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway explains in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Alito-Justice-Reshaped-Restored-Constitution\/dp\/1541607139\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">her new book<\/a>, he has become one of the most important justices in American history. And he seems to recognize it, as demonstrated by his calling out the leftist temper tantrum that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/05\/05\/alito-torches-jacksons-trivial-and-insulting-hot-take-on-supreme-courts-latest-callais-order\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">threw this week<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>He still has some doubters, though. With <em>Carvalho<\/em>, he can prove them wrong. He can show that <em>Dobbs <\/em>wasn\u2019t a political decision or a blow to privacy rights. It simply jettisoned a flawed legal doctrine, a doctrine that was not grounded in <em>stare decisis<\/em> but in politics. In fact, in <em>Dobbs<\/em>, Alito did more to promote the substantive due process doctrine than his liberal colleagues have ever done. He removed it from the political process and revived the clear legal rule that should govern these cases.<\/p>\n<p>He can continue that in <em>Carvalho<\/em>. We should expect no less from America\u2019s greatest living judge.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Scott Street is a Democratic lawyer and consultant in Los Angeles. He regularly writes about legal and political issues.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After six years, many want to move past Covid-19, but allegations against Fauci\u2019s aide make this a key moment to review government errors, human costs, and how courts should respond in future emergencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1334,"featured_media":2599805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Copy-of-Untitled-93.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[79251,3774,38655,36292,32275],"class_list":["post-2599804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-bodily-autonomy","tag-covid-19","tag-political-hypocrisy","tag-reproductive-rights","tag-supreme-court"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Copy-of-Untitled-93.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599808,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599804\/revisions\/2599808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2599805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}